I am writing this article on December 7, 2021, 80 years after the “date which will live in infamy”, which is how Franklin Roosevelt described the attack by Japanese naval and air forces on Pearl Harbor on a quiet Sunday morning.
That attack launched the United States into World War II. Over 2800 US military and civilian personnel died that day. Only the battle of Antietam in the Civil War and the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 had a higher one-day loss of American lives. It was a day that lives in infamy.
Now consider three facts related to that attack. First, Japan is now a trusted ally of the United States. Japanese Americans who were uprooted from their homes and forced into internment camps received an apology and reparations from the US government. Meanwhile, over one million African Americans soldiers who served in the armed forces between 1941 and 1945 were denied the benefits of the GI Bill that provided white soldiers with money for home ownership and higher education.
The wealth gap that exists between African Americans and white Americans is traceable in large measure to this gross injustice. Denying the GI Bill to over one million persons who answered the call to duty and service following the attack on Pearl Harbor is something else that lives in infamy.
White Americans need to understand that their success has always been achieved on an uneven playing field.
This act of economic injustice has impacted African Americans for these last 80 years. Home ownership has always been the foundation of wealth creation and family stability in this country. A college education has long been the key to upward mobility in employment and salary. Those opportunities were denied to African Americans veterans of World War Two when they were denied the benefits of the G.I. Bill.
White Americans need to understand that their success has always been achieved on an uneven playing field. How much wealth has been lost to African American families over the last many decades solely because of this racist practice? Only now, 80 years after Pearl Harbor, has a bill been introduced in the US Congress by Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, and co-sponsored by James Clyburn of South Carolina to make up for the egregious treatment of those who fought fascism overseas and segregation and second-class status here at home.
If anyone still wonders what Critical Race Theory is in practice, this is it. Decades of discrimination and disadvantage rooted in policies sponsored by the U.S. government and supported by other institutions like banks and insurance companies and real estate agencies have resulted in the wealth and health gap we experience today. This is the “intersectionality” that sits at the heart of Critical Race Theory!
Now comes the question of whether the current U.S. Congress will pass this bill and provide some reparations for the descendants of those who fought in World War Two, but who did not receive the benefits of their white comrades-in-arms. Failure to treat in equal fashion all who served in World War Two is something else that lives in infamy!
• • •• • •
The Rev. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, retired in 2019 as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York, where he had served since 2011.
